Orca: We Are Spartans
by JonasGrant
Summary: The human-covenant is over and Spartan III team Orca decides to buy a ship and start a legitimate business, but their first job goes south and they find themselves flung into the darkness of the far future where they must fight foes that makes the covenant look like school kids.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: If you are new, look up Orca in the halo mass effect crossover area for the full story, it will soon be in the halo section only, however. **

**The ass end of nowhere**

**March 20**

**2553**

**1255 Hours**

"This is stupid. Seriously, doc, you've got us out here in the ass end of nowhere for three days now, think you can get us back somewhere we can at least shoot our problems?"

This is the first time Fal speaks with the doc since she set foot on the ship and in light of the current staring contest over the kitchen table, I kinda wish she'd kept quiet.

To my left, Trevor munches on his burger with enthusiasm, oblivious to the sudden rise of tension while, to the right, Iona gives Fal a stare of death.

The doctor puts down her meal and takes a second to prepare her answer, "I am working with very little resources, trying to convert a human Shaw-Fujikawa translight engine into something resembling the Covenant model, if I make even the slightest mistake, this ship will end up sucked trough a black hole into a hundred meter long Spaghetti. I could botch my job, but I doubt you'd like the result."

Fal nods once and return to her plate, "Alright, take your time then."

G317 is a lot like an animal, when you think about it; aggressive, unsubtle, predatory and quick to hit the berserk button, but she is completely oblivious to feelings such as remorse, shame or resentment, as aggressive as her question was, the doc supplied a satisfying explanation so Fal won't push it, unlike many other peoples who would try to justify their anger or incitate the doc to work faster.

Abe, in front of me, begins swapping extremely complex scientific talk out of which I can only salvage a word out of ten, prompting me to start a discussion of my own with Iona.

"Once that's contract's done," She looks up, just knowing I'm speaking to her, "I'd like to go to Emerald Cove…"

A slight smile tugs at the corner of her lips. We trained in underwater operation there. Curtis sabotaged my and Abby's tank and, in return, we stole all of his gear while he was sleeping on one of the island, leaving him stranded, half naked and without supplies other that his desalinization kit.

The next of the week we spent on an island that had previously been occupied, cooking clams and tropical fishes and learning how to surf.

We're halfway trough the re-enactment when Bob bursts out laughing. I know exactly why.

"Then, Zombie boy sees somethin' triangular stickin' from the water and he starts yellin' 'Shark!' like it woulda made it go away!" Fal and Trev join him in laughing, finding it just as funny as they did back then. "And Chris swims and swims so fuckin' fast he got halfway across the island and even then, it's the palm three that stopped him!"

"So what was it really?" The doc asks, interrupting her conversation with Abby.

Iona just grins evilly while answering, "Chief Mendez, our chief instructor, turns out, the Spartan IIs had ended up on that island too. When he found our instructor, he deduced where we had gone."

"Curtis had sunburns all over…" Abby recalls with a sadistic grin, "I almost felt bad for the man." She then plant her eyes in mine, "But that's not why you want to go there, is it?"

God damnit Abe!

"No," I confess, "it ain't," I managed to piece some memories together while we were there, little details, but it brought me to a simple conclusion, "Emerald's where I'm born."

There's a few seconds of silence around the table, then Trevor speaks, nodding slowly, "Makes sense; all there is there are clams and starfishes."

Abe is the first to get it, "Because of his regenerative abilities and…"

"No, because he's dumb as a rock and totally spineless!" Bob quips, earning a streak of ketchup across the face.

I duck under the mustard counter attack and roll away before…

*Splat!*

Should have known better that to start a food war with the team's sniper…

Iona looks up at the yellow streak running across her face and growl dangerously.

I wipe the mustard in my eyes and signal Bob to go right while I take left. At the table, Iona's already organized the troops and they're getting up.

"Excuse us, doctor," She politely tells Farkas, who's watching with interest, "We must go educate our little brothers.

Bob and I begin running right after that, Fal and Abby going after me while I guess Big guy and Boss are going after the sniper.

My shoulder hit the wall quite painfully, but I recover fast enough to duck under Fal's outstretched hands.

I speed past the infirmary and Hydroponic area, practically feeling Fal's breath on the back of my neck along the way. She's faster than me, but not by much and the corridor is not long enough for her to reach her peak speed.

No clue how that happens, but I find myself diving headlong down the hatch to the cargo bay, landing with a roll under Fal's angry bitching about my lack of fear of injury.

Her exact words are "Fucking Zombie boy!"

I recover from the roll twenty centimeters form the railing. A bit more and I was barreling down eight meters…

I don't stop; I jump, spinning sideway in midair and landing on the bay floor with another roll.

There are plenty of crates here to hide behind, but that would be too obvious. Instead, I climb the chain leading to the crane and hide in the dark folds between the ceiling's support struts.

When Fal arrives, soon followed by Abby, they only see Iona and Trev, coming from the opposite door.

"You lost yours?" Iona calls, smiling, and Fal only nods, squinting to pierce the darkness bellow.

Iona and Abby look up, but I'm hidden by the large support strut and too far to the back of the cargo area for them to have a good angle at me. Of course, I need to duck my head behind cover when they look too closely, but I manage to stay hidden by squeezing myself between the two support struts, holding in place trough pressure and friction.

"Sneaky bastards," Trevor growls, "Probably hiding right next to us, laughing their asses off."

"Yeah," Fal scoffs, "You take your eyes off them just one second and poof! They're gone!"

Iona shakes her head and that, "Okay, guys, you win, you can come out!"

I trust Boss enough to know this isn't a trap, so I let go and use the thick chain to rappel my way down, sticking my tongue out at Fal and Abe on the way down.

"You guys are getting rusty," I call upon hitting the floor, stretching my arms and legs a little, "Maybe we should hide your stuff, make you train your seeking skills…"

"Screw you, Zombie boy." Is the general answer.

Bob appears next to me out of the darkness and I instinctively step away from the possible threat.

"You ain't much better, bro…" He laughs with a wink.

After that, Iona decides we should reconvert a part of the hold into a gymnasium and set up war games like Mendez used to put us trough, so we don't become soft.

0

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**Spartan-class Freighter Thermopylae**

**?**

**?**

I wake up to the sound of alarms, my cabin plunged in darkness.

Not much to see anyway; there's the bed, opposite to the ladder, the shower and toilet to the left and the dresser to the right. Plus, as a Spartan, I can see pretty well in the dark, enough to orient myself, anyway.

I decide to suit up before I leave the room and take five minutes or so to put my armor on in the dark. Guess I'll have to work on that, it took me half as long the first time, but I had a giant flower roaming around looking for me back then.

As I climb up from my room, Trevor is descending from his, just over me.

I let Big guy go first and jump after him.

He's wearing his armor as well, the scratched brown plating glistening in my suit's low-light vision enhancement.

"What's up?" I ask the heavy gunner, who just shrugs his large shoulder pads, "Alright," I continue, "Go get some guns and meet me in the cockpit."

Trev nods once and we part ways. I meet Fal just as she climbs out of her room and tell her to wake the others.

I soon pass the empty common area and…

"Chris," Iona's voice in my comm. almost gives me a heart attack, "meet me in the cargo bay ASAP."

I flash my acknowledgment light green and turn around.

0

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**Five minutes earlier.**

Abby loved this ship, she loved ships in general, but this one was her favorite ever; whereas most military vessels were designed with functionality and cheapness in mind, this freighter was made for practicality and comfort and although outdated, basic human comfort hadn't changed much in…. Well, ever.

So, unlike the military ships, outfitted with rigid command layout and little customizability, the cockpit was made to accommodate a single pilot. Every tactile screen could switch its function with another one if the pilot preferred and the joystick could easily be exchanged for simpler or more complex models, so long as they were compatible.

Abejundio spent more time in the cockpit than in her cabin now, customizing, installing videogames, fine tuning the commands. Iona had made it clear that the room was all hers, since beyond G051, no one in the squad had enough piloting skill to be sent there for anything other than temporary replacement and maintenance.

So when the radar blip appeared, it did so square in her face and she took exactly three seconds to recognize the Unggoy ship.

She immediately sounded the alarm and contacted the doc in engineering.

"We have problems, senorita, you have three minutes to get that drive working."

"The Grunts?" Came the tired answer.

"Yeah."

There was some resignation in the Doc's voice. She knew they Pylae was not equipped with weapons and that its stealth systems would not keep it safe for long. The only solution in that case would be to make a jump with the half assedly re-assembled drive, solution that had a fifty-fifty chance of ending in a spaghetti scenario.

Two minutes to jury rig a drive to the ship was a tight schedule, but she had worked tighter during the war and always came out no worse for wear and having learned a new shortcut.

0

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0

Abby is the last one in the cargo bay, but she's all geared up and ready for drop.

We have yet to be briefed, but Iona, Kat and Abby seem to have spotted something very bad that requires everyone combat ready in the bay.

Whatever that thing is, it will take a lot of firepower to bring down; Fal is loading her auto-shotgun magazines with self-propelled Armor-Piercing slugs, Bob received one of Abby's beam rifles, Iona is loading her MA5C with FAR 5H0T Fuel Air Rounds, same as Trevor and I, while Abby is hauling around so many covenant guns that she looks like a Christmas three.

No sign of Doctor Farkas, however, but that's not very surprising, I guess, she's no soldier after all, she'll probably stay on the ship.

I'd love to be packing a M395, or a BR-55, these pack real punch, but I'll have to make due with special ammo and hope whatever Iona is pitting us against will fall from it.

I jump off the Salamander's hood and walk up to Abe as she steps off the elevator platform.

"SITREP?" Pretty much covers what I want to know.

Her dome helmet snaps up slightly and she stops walking. I can see her turn to Iona, a few meters behind me.

I see Boss nod in my rear view cam and Abby switches to squad wide comm:

"We were followed by the grunts and had to jury rig the FTL drive back in place and make a random jump…" Makes sense so far, Fal and Trevor stop their weapon maintenance to listen in, "But we ended up way off course, star charts are as lost as seagull on tequila, we are not receiving any kind of UNSC transmissions and are now orbiting an unidentified celestial body…" So far, it still makes sense, but why the guns? "…inhabited by humans speaking an unknown dialect and apparently fighting off an alien invasion."

She resumes walking toward Iona and the loading ramp. I follow.

"Covenant?" I sure hope so, this war ended way too soon.

"No, pero…" She thinks about it for a while and I'm not sure wether she said but or dog.

Iona finishes loading her last clip and stuff the thing in a thermo-resistant hardcase. "The bastards looked close to Brutes on the infrareds, but there's more of them down there than we ever thought were in the entire Covenant." I already use hardcases on my suit instead of soft pouches, so my clips are safe where they already are.

"That explains the FARs, but why do we care?" Bob might be a happy go lucky assassin, he really lacks in altruism, although I can't argue with him, it's not our problem, we're retired.

Fal jumps off the hood as well, her anger showing clearly through her body language.

"We care because we're SPARTANS," she spits, taking a few threatening steps toward Bob, "we kill aliens and save humans, that's what we were made for!"

Trev steps between the two, his massive stature keeping them from even seeing each other. "I'll tell you why we care; not because we were made that way, not because we took an oath when we were six, but because we're still Orca team, the best group of warriors in the galaxy, we can help these people, we can let these new bastards know humanity doesn't take shit from anyone and we can get very rich doing so."

As good an argument as any.


	2. Chapter 2

The Pylae hovers over the human line for a few seconds and I jump off and straight into the trenches. I expected to have guns aimed at me, be asked questions, be stared at. Nope, all I get is a few surprised, thousand yard looks from the six grunts close enough to have even noticed the drop, and even they just dismiss me as some new guy with fancy gear and quickly return their gazes to the no mans' land.

The big green fuckers seem to be keeping to themselves so far, so I head straight for one of the five possible command posts Kat pointed out.

I pass tired looking grunts on the way, male, female, old, young, they're all here. They remind me of Marines during the war, no hope left, no fear because they have nothing left to loose. They see me, see the badass armor and odd gun and the nasty looking dents and scars in my armor and they want to feel hope, but none of them allows themselves to, because if they start to hope, to think they might live another day, they get something to loose, and fear will come back.

I enter the small pillbox, barely more than that, really; a round, pill-shaped box of steel and concrete filled with maps and tactical overviews. Some of it is crazy high tech, but most is just pen and paper.

There are four officers around the room, one seems to coordinate air, the other handles infantry and the third tries to keep whatever armor they have alive and firing. No easy job.

Fourth one, a raven haired woman with a helmet too large for her head, presides over everything and tries to keep it all in sync with whatever it is command wants from her.

I'm not at the top echelon, but Iona said I should help in any way I can, so that's what I'll do.

I salute the woman who looks at me like I'm a trench rat that scurried around back there.

"Who on terra are you?" My translator takes a second to compare the speech with known dialects and comes up with a gothic, latin, Scandinavian paste of words with stuff it just can't understand.

"Chris-G051," I introduce myself, "I'm here to provide assistance."

Might as well have told her I was Abraham Lincoln and here to sell her a ShopVac.

"I didn't ask for back up!" She spits, "Who sent you anyway?"

One billion dollars question, and without tight beam or radio link with anyone, I can't ask Orca for the correct answer. What the hell. "Nobody," I explain, "I'm ex-special forces, thought you could use the help."

Somehow, good answer. Guess she thought I was some hot shot black ops bastard coming to steal the glory from her boys.

"Just like that?" She's not convinced at all, "Out of kindness?"

I laugh and shrug, "Boredom would be more like it, I run a private shipping business with my former squad mate, we came here looking for work, seems we found some."

"So it's money you want…" It seems to fall in with her word view, almost comforting her, somehow.

She invites me over to the tac display and asks me if I have any input to offer.

Takes me a while to understand the whole tabletop thing laid out in front of me; the holographic displays are whatever spots they still have satellite coverage on and their intel is 100% solid, the paper maps and wooden or plastic models laid on top of them are places where the fog of war is thick and the only source of updates are the reports from disoriented canon fodders on the front line.

They are holding a temple, waiting for someone, won't tell me who, and digging in around the large cathedral-like structure we dropped Trevor into. Whole area is essentially a shitload of swamp to the south and a shitload of grassland to the north. A canyon runs in from east to west and the cathedral is set on a bridge over the edges, so there's only two possible way in.

From that, if your tactical perspective is too limited, you might believe they're bunkered down at both bridges, but that's a stupid assumption because, hell, why wait for your enemy to knock down your door? They have six layers of trenches on both sides, supplemented by tanks to the north and artillery to the south. Brilliant.

Why? Because the enemy tanks are being slowed by the swamps, giving the ten miles snipers a good shot, while the grassland lets the direct-fire armors a clear line of sight on the hostile tanks. From what I see, they dug hole in the ground to hide the tanks in, leaving only the turrets exposed, something the enemy can't do and one heck of an advantage.

They've mined both approaches, set up snipers, heavy weapon emplacements and mortars all over the place. What else can they do? They have this place locked down tighter than Abby's smut fics folder!

Well, all that's left is for them to dare.

"The enemy is just rushing at any sign of weakness," I explain, showing a few secondary trenches that were hammered after getting medevac or supply drops, "Stop the artillery barrage to the south, let them get close, let them breathe down your boys' neck and think they've found a weak spot and tear."

She shakes her head, already dismissing the idea, but I'm not done. "Then resume the shelling, send any infantry you can to the south and send all available armors pushing north."

Her mouth opens and I see she's got some smart reason why it sucks, but it gets caught at the back of her throat when she sees what I mean. I get a feeling it's not an illumination more than just an 'Oh, yeah, now I see it.'

The enemy so far has been keeping its forces relatively balanced between north and south. Luring them in the swamp and pounding them with arty will do some damage to both fronts, but the real kill move will be the swarm of infantry, using superior mobility, numbers and stealth to lay waste on the large and lumbering hostile forces.

To the north, there is no available cover, meaning the tanks would get a clear shot all the way.

Most likely, their command structure already saw this and is considering this plan right now, but the fact I came up with it after a ten second analysis of their tactical data should be proof enough that I'm no thug with a fancy suit.

The way she nods clearly says she already knew that, "Good plan, the general has been considering something similar for a few days now, we only need an hardened team to drop at some key hostile hard points and soften them up before we do that." The way she looks at me, I just got volunteered.

The guy leading air points me to the landing area. Out of the pillbox and far back from the main trench. I wade away in the thick mud and make it to the small pond they call supply depot, the bastard child of a Pelican and a Sparrowhawk is boiling a spot of water with its turbines. The troop bay is already full of grunts with eyes that would make an ODST look friendly.

A middle aged man with a fancy hat and WWII overcoat jumps off a crate and scrutinises me from behind mirrored shades. Only fair, my own helmet hides my eyes. He seems to see right through it, scrutinizing me through the armor like I were standing there naked.

Whatever he sees, he likes, because I get one approving nod and he thrusts something on my chest, no clue what; it's halfway between flamethrower and machinegun.

My suit scans it and the feedback I get makes a covenant plasma rifle look like an SMG.

"All yours," he explains as I strap the backpack to my armor and the gun itself to my chest, "Cadian Hellgun, treat it well."

I need to toss my assault rifle in the mud to make room for the new Directed Energy Weapon and I don't care; if my suit's right, this shit is the most effective piece of weaponry I ever got my hands on.

Not hardware, though, it's still centuries behind the Mjolnir armor. Well, mine, anyway, regular Spartans didn't really get as much Gizmos as Orca did. Still don't know who paid for all of those.

No time for that, though, I've got a ride to catch.


	3. Chapter 3

The man with a dark coat and a funky hat proceeds to brief his boys, and me in the process, "The Ork filth has taken root within an abandoned PDF bunker," PDF, three letters that are spoken with the same sneer Marines reserved to PMCs, "they are sitting on a large pile of Krak missiles and incendiary ordinance, though they have yet to employ them..."

A major tactical advantage and they just _sit_ on it? These things are certainly related with Brutes.

Outside, mud and dirt gives way to slummy water and tall grasses, purple tall grasses. I expected green, somehow, but not all plants are built on the same principle and, in my experience, very few of them are actually green, even on earth.

"Our duty is to light up that ordnance under them and enjoy the fireworks." The man finishes, barely earning a smirk from the youngest members of the team.

Gun on my lap, boots hanging under the troop transport and HUD actively scanning everything I see for potential threats, I take a second to face the man and tell him that's a shit idea.

"Would our _ex-_shock trooper want to offer some insight?" He doesn't buy into my story, I don't need the whole body language reading skills Curtis hammered into me, he's quite upfront about it.

"We blow that depot, we kill a few bad guys and go home, that's classic," don't get me wrong, I'll take classic over the alternative any time, but you can bet we'll be part of the infantry that will head down in the swamps and these boom sticks could make our life much easier, "but it could be brilliant; we sneak in that bunker and use some of that ordnance on known enemy clusters until the position becomes too hot and then set the place on fire."

I get a single nod from a graying, rough-looking sergeant, but no one else.

"We'd be going against our orders." Black coat points out, like I just offered we go rape a few babies.

A few blips appear on my HUD, but they're instantly identified as human and marked friendly. What should I answer to that? Make it look like it's not really disobeying… I don't know enough about these guys' psyche, so dropping the matter would be the safe thing.

Then a kid, which is hilarious because he's two years older than I am, comes up with something, "We could say the Orkz just fired a few shots randomly, they're dumb like that."

He gets a hole drilled right through his forehead by the officer's pistol, which acts like a tiny M6 Laser, and I'm on my feet before the corpse is off his, or the smell of burnt flesh has filled the room. The officer aims his weapon at me and my translator goes bonkers, unable to understand a single word that comes out of the guy's throat.

You don't shoot at someone a Spartan considers friendly, first mistake.

You don't aim a weapon at a Spartan, second mistake.

If you do aim your gun at us, shoot us quickly, last mistake.

A single red beam flares just past my visor and causes my shields to flare. Had the things been off, it would have grazed my helmet harmlessly, but the shields are a few centimeters thick, so they take the shot's full force.

1.1% drop in shield energy, on par with an M6 series pistol. I store that information for later and throw the man off board. It all took less than a second and only after the screams have stopped do I notice the smell of blood and bacon.

Everyone is just looking, their faces set in their default 'grim determination' mode. Nobody makes a threatening move, not a word is spoken and if it weren't for the corpse leaking brain matter in the slip-proof floor, you'd think nothing even happened.

My helmet registers a report from the cockpit; Commissar Valo Logtar suffered a terrible accident after the summary trial of Trooper Isabelle Nako. So, the kid was actually a girl. Hard to spot with all these plates.

Orders are to carry on with the assault and I file that up as well. Commissars are non-essential members of the military, like any commissioned officer under the rank of lieutenant.

No such thing, you say? I had to deal with second lieutenants at least a hundred times during the war, and even met a few third lieutenants in very bad days.

One of them was dumb enough to try and hijack a Pelican full of ODSTs because he was afraid to die. He too was thrown out the airlock.

The transport drops the guys in teams of four at three points, all about three kliks from the target, but I don't go with any of them, instead asking the pilot to make a high altitude pass over the target. I'm not suicidal yet and have no wish to assault this place on my own; I just want to gather some intel on those Orkz, maybe spot a few weaknesses to exploit.

To his credit, the pilot only seems mildly shocked when I just step off his bird.

Just like training; spread eagle, eyes on the ground, not the altimeter, lining up the target.

My first drop went to shit, now I always get the shakes in free-fall. As close to a phobia you'll ever find in a Spartan. It's like entering a cold lake, you need to jump straight in and think about it on the way.

The shields shape themselves aerodynamically and I gain a lot more maneuverability. The shields, gel layers and lockdown protocols will take most of the impact, but I still need to hit dirt without being shot down, which means no gliding, just good old falling.

Kat reminds me it's a bad idea, but does as I say and re-forms the shield in combat configuration.

The fall speeds up.

Doesn't help with the shakes.

The compound is octagonal, a massive honeycomb structure built on the top and an flat concrete base underneath. The thing must be thirty meters wide, but the green and grey dots massed on and around it still look pretty damn big.

None of them is looking up, I zoom on all of their faces in the microseconds it takes to correct my course and they're all just staring at the swamps or each others.

Landing in quicksand may seem pretty stupid, but I have a good reason for it. The Orkz can't have missed the sound of my landing and I'm still stuck in lockdown for a minute or so, the sands quickly burry the suits and myself in it under a meter or so of mud, by the time the green bastards get here, there's no traces of me left.

A single bubble shield gets me out of the sludge and my cloaking field kicks in before these little green goblins come to investigate.

From there, it's basic scope and mark, crawling around the stagnant water, through the mangroves and under knots of roots, Kat marking every hostile I spot and adding them to the count. There is only one door to the facility, on the northern side, and no window, thus I only count the Tangos on the outside.

One hundred and fifty-two, two thirds of those goblins, the rest big fucking green gorillas. Thermal and X-rays have nothing to offer on what's inside, so I suppose we'll need to find out the hard way.

Not right now, though, first I spot two decent vantage points, a crashed troop transport and rocky piton, located both south and north-east of the structure, about a hundred meters out. I'm kneeling at spitting distance of the bunker, behind a buggy of some kind, so if I can see them, they must have a good view of the place.

The Sergeant is surprised to find me on his 'Combead', but grateful for the tip. A minute later, two dark are lining up shots and calculating wind speed.

Back in the war, I would never go anywhere without some high yield explosives, but we just don't have any on the 'Pylae, so I can't blow up the enemy vehicles unless I tap in their ammo dump.

"Request denied," the sergeant's voice answers my request, "we do this by the book, kid, hold tight and get ready to flank any hard spots."

"Wilco." Nothing else to say, he doesn't know I have cloaking tech and that's something I'll keep for myself as long as possible.

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Further down south, Fal was being far less subtle than her comrade. Her task was to eliminate a massive charge of poorly equipped feral Orkz, numbering in the thousands and all headed straight for a vital landing zone.

Ammunitions had run out in the first minutes of the fight and she fallen back on her Katana, like the hero of some old Japanese movie, though there was no standing of ground or single handed barrage, the greenskins flooded right past the small Asian woman, but with considerably less forces and limbs than they had prior to crossing what the Guards now called the "Blood Line", a seventy meters wide, ten meters thick border in which the Spartan would cloak, uncloak, hack limbs left and right in graceful spins and lashes, cloak again, uncloak at the opposite side of the line, falling from the sky like a vengeful angel, her chalk white armor soaked in the blood of her preys.

On two occasions, the guardsmen though their angel was done for, swallowed by a mountain of Ork flesh and bones. On both occasion, the greenskins were kicked back with such force they seemed to have been swept off by the Emperor's hand.

"Lockdown Newb!" Kat laughed over the DeathKore music flooding Fal's helmet the second time.

The song seemed to consist of a few small animals being tortured, glass grinding, nails rasping on a blackboard and mindless screaming sounding somewhat close to "Eat, Fuck, Kill, Sleep, Die!"

"It's a legitimate strategy." Fal hissed back, lashing out with her sword at any green spot she could find still up. Had they landed even a single punch, the Orks could have done some damage, they were neatly stronger and tougher than the Spartan, but they reacted slowly and she was, as most Guardsmen present would put it, 'Faster than an ADHD stricken Eldar on recaf."¸

The only projectile weapon these Orkz carried fired big slugs with muzzle velocities akin to BB gun, which did help with the feeling of surreal speed.

Sitting on a mountainside almost beyond the line of horizon, Bob was having a friendly competition with another Sniper, though neither knew the location of the other, they had stolen each other's kills enough to make it personal.

He fired a single beam that bit through a Nob's forehead, into a MekBoy's organic eye and finally boiled away in a spot of mud. The other responded by shooting the ammunition reserve of a Squiggoth, blasting the creature's belly like a watermelon hit by a .12 gauge slug.

"Only counts as one." He groaned to himself, scope dancing from one target to another, seeking something worth shooting…

Abby, within the city itself, was busy, in the quasi-divine sense, as she and Kat were assailed by Adeptus Mechanicus priests that either thought they were the Omnissia or heretics, when all they wanted to do was improve their AA batteries' targeting algorithms and reduce their power requirement.

The fact she understood binary perfectly and called it a laughable attempt at encryption did not help her case.

Trevor, assigned to watch Iona's back, was having a philosophy contest with some kind of machinegun totting knight Teutonic, a Salamander, the man had told him.

They were pretty much at the point of arguing what the prerequisites to being a god were and anyone listening in would be hard pressed to understand what their individual opinions were and how exactly they were any different.

Iona… Well, the Inquisitor on site had become very interested in her and no one knew exactly what the two were up to, as they had vanished in a hidden chamber within the cathedral and given their men strict orders not to bother them.


End file.
